Have your own merchant account and build your credibility with your customers.

Many subscription site owners outsource their credit card processing activity to outside agencies. These days it has become very simple for subscription sites to have their own merchant accounts, thereby enabling them to handle their own credit card payments from the customers. Having your own credit card processing facility increases your credibility in your customers eyes.

There are some pre-requisites that your merchant account bank looks for, on your site. Therefore before applying for your own merchant account to the bank, the following pages should be there on your website, so that the merchant account bank can review the same.

1. Product and/or Services Page
This page on the website explains what exactly you are selling- whether it is a product or service and its features etc, so that the visitor or a prospective buyer gets the details he is looking for.

2. Pricing Page
This page of the website clearly states the price at which you are offering your products and services to the customers.

3. Order Form Page
This page has the order form. When ever a prospective or existing customer wants to place an order, he will make use of the order form. The order form should also contain fields for the information required for accepting payment through credit cards, on a SSL secured site.

4. Contact Page
The merchant account bank requires you to have a contact information page. This page should state your mailing address, along with the company name and phone number and email address, as well.

5. Customer Service/Return Policy Page
This page states your goods return and refund policy. You may or may not have a refund policy, in either case the merchant account bank needs you to clearly inform your customers if you do or do not refund the subscription fees.

For having your own merchant account bank, the banks would also like the subscription websites to confirm the following two steps. Though these are not a technical or a 'must' requirement, but the banks are happier in case these two steps are complied with.

Have a business banking account with the same bank. It would make good business sense to have your business account with the same bank that you are opening the merchant account with. You will have faster access to your money, else if your business account is in a different bank then money transfer time is longer and you will also have to pay money transfer charges.

Offer recurring billing. Merchant account banks are happier if you give your customers the facility of subscribing for shorter periods- in this type of scenario, for you the business is more, and revenue is higher because shorter subscriptions are more expensive than the longer ones, for the merchant account bank the exposure to loss is less and for the customer it is a better deal because commitment for them is for a shorter duration.

To set up a merchant account bank is really a simple process. All you have to do is to make sure that you meet all the requirements of the bank.